Letters to the Editor – week ending 4 July 2026

Read what people have been writing to our editor about this week. Find out how to share your own views here.

McNuggets…

The only surprise in McSweeney’s statement is his admitting to Labour’s lack of focus on Government.

I’ve always been astonished at the way Shadow Secretaries of State were swapped about without regard to knowledge, skills and experience and their lack of in-depth understanding of policy.

I’m a member of three Socialist Societies – which could have been repositories of these virtues – and how they struggle to be part of the policy-making process.

We saw how the “policy forums” under various leaderships were largely window-dressing. Wherever “policy making” was meant to be located, it wasn’t among communities of members well- versed in the subject.

This vacuum sends a message to ambitious MPs and aspirants that the only subjects worth studying are whose coat-tails to cling on to.

The Party has little or no capacity to analyse and develop policy in key areas and yet maintains no hinterland whose support might be engaged.

Lack of any in-depth knowledge of how either local councils or government departments is chronic but there is no willingness to acknowledge this massive failing. Ministers still imagine officials will save them from their ignorance and inexperience when called upon to implement their skimpy promises.

Paul Martin
Member of Labour Housing Group, Socialist Educational Association and SERA.

*****

There should have been two discrete groups, one working on the election, the other on policy delivery, with a coordinating committee. Anyone with any business insight would have understood this.

As a Cllr having to knock on doors I don’t think I will ever forgive the Winter Fuel debacle.

Cllr Ramsay Ross

Devolution and defence

Emma,

In your piece on Burnham’s plans you say you are an advocate for devolution but are interested in reasons why not.

I trained and worked in Local Government from 1972-80, qualified as a Municipal Building Surveyor, including training in LG law and finance, and experienced the reorganisation in 1974. In our case, 13 Towns, Boroughs and Rural District Councils merged into Wakefield MDC, and the giant West Riding County Council was split into Lincolnshire, Humberside, South Yorks, West Yorks and North Yorks Counties. A few years later, West Yorks powers were passed to the District Councils but we still ended up with a Combined Authority for practical purposes of, e.g., Fire, Police and Highways. The NHS is separate again and Housing has been hived off into largely unaccountable Housing Associations. My own specialism, Building Control, was privatised by Thatcher and Heseltine, allowing Building ‘professionals’ to certify their own design and workmanship which, in my view, allowed tragic disasters like Grenfell to happen.

Devolution muddies the waters of responsibility, allowing national government to blame failures on local government, while local government blames national government for inadequate funding. Give local government funding for one purpose and they spend it on something else. Blair gave them funding for ‘education, education, education’ and the expected improvements did not happen so his government set up the academy system taking funding away from councils and giving it to schools directly.

These were Labour local authorities. Think what our new Reform Wakefield MDC will do with extra funding – still cut services but reduce Council Tax, claiming success for their policies? Will these democratically elected Reform controlled local authorities have the devolved power to close asylum seeker accommodation and give housing priority to ‘White British’ residents or however they want to frame it? Pushing people who don’t qualify into a (for now) Labour controlled area?

How will Burnham feel about giving extra funding and powers to a new Mayor of Manchester if they turn out to be Reform?

I’m for more central control with local oversight where Regional/City/District Civil Servants are accountable to a national government minister implementing national policy and achieving outputs and outcomes, and also be held to account locally for local delivery, including variation for local circumstances, by locally elected representatives. 

Civil servants can be removed for incompetence or non-compliance by a Minister – locally elected representatives can’t. Keeping tabs on what local authorities are doing with their funding and powers will take another whole layer of bureaucracy.

If you want local democracy look at proportional representation and forming coalitions with like-minded parties on common issues first.

Regards

Colin Bryant
Wakefield

*****

The argument over defence spending really is the most bizarre construct, loaded with contradictions.

So more is needed to spend on defence? The reason, the growing threat, with Russia most often cited. This, a country that has struggled to overcome Ukraine for four years.

The biggest threat is possibly across the Atlantic in Washington, from our former friends. But Britain is happy to keep funding a nuclear weapon it does not control and allow the US to maintain numerous bases across the UK.

Those arguing for more spending on defence are often dressed up as objective commentators, when they are actually representatives of the arms industry. This industry wants constant war. Something former US President Dwight Eisenhower warned about all those years ago.

These commentators never mention the appalling waste that has occurred with Defence procurement over recent decades – just give them more!

The pro-defence spending lobby helpfully tells us that the funds must come from welfare spending, betraying something of a loaded dice. Why not that Trident nuclear program? Energy projects it seems are also an area where things can be cut to spend on defence. No need to worry that climate change is probably the biggest threat to the country’s security.

A more rational, objective debate is needed on defence spending. Central should be Britain’s future role in the world and what the threats really are. A more peaceful sustainable world should be the objective, not keeping the coffers of the military industrial complex full.

Paul Donovan
London

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